Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been the longest week of my life hands down. So much has happened and days are so long. First let me tell you about where I am.
I am in Royal City, Washington an area known for agriculture. Currently though I am freezing. I did not come prepared for the winter weather so things have been interesting. I think for the first time in my life I have experienced my whole body shaking cause I'm so cold. I have already been gifted several pairs of warm tights and a pair of boots from some wonderful members here.
There are a lot of hispanic people here also and I am struggling with understanding them. I feel like either I understand basically a whole conversation or I understand nothing at all... Sometimes I just want to cry because I want to understand what people are saying in spanish SO BAD but I just can't. My companion keeps reminding me I just need to be patient with myself but I'm having a hard time with this. Back to there being a lot of hispanic people... I would just like to say they are a lot nicer than white people. They actually talk to us. I had the wonderful experience of getting a door slammed in my face last night and let me just say this person was not hispanic. Oh well. I was told to remember it's not me they are rejecting, it's Christ and His Gospel.
So my new companion is none other than Sister Leyva who I actually know from home because she was in my stake and we went to Girls' Camp together. It's been pretty cool getting to talk about some people we both know/knew from home. She's a hard worker and I know I have a lot to learn.
We were both doubled into our area so that has been intersting and really hard for me. I have to drive and I don't like not ever knowing exactly how to get places. I'm also not exactly looking forward to icey and snowy roads...
A couple miracles for this week have been two times we have pulled up to a house and found the people we were looking for pulling up at the same time. Both times we were able to talk with the people and in one case we had a really good lesson.
This past
Sunday my companion and I spoke in our English ward and introduced ourselves. We cover both the Royal City 2nd Ward (English) and the Royal City 3rd Branch (Spanish). We have a lot of work cut out for us, but the members of the ward and branch here are truly absolutely amazing and I already feel so much love and appreciation for them. Because we cover a ward and branch we are at church from
8am to about
2:30pm on Sundays. We have a couple meetings and we also attend both the ward and branch for part of the time.
Well I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the warm weather in Texas!
Love,Hna Brighton
